AUGUSTA, Ga. - The James Brown statue on Broad Street, his hometown, was draped in an American flag and a red scarf Tuesday as several dozen people gathered to pay their respects to the late singer.

Flowers were left at the base of the statue in tribute to Brown, who died Monday in Atlanta. He was 73.

One visitor to the statue, John Arthur Thomas, 73, of Daleville, Ala., said he stopped by because Brown was a legend and he had "done a lot of things from the heart to help people."

"There were some troubled times in his life, like everybody else, but he meant well," Thomas said. "He is a legend. There will never be another James Brown."

Brown was born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, and abandoned as a 4-year-old to the care of relatives and friends. He grew up in Augusta in an "ill-repute area," as he once called it, learning how to hustle to survive.

By the eighth grade in 1949, he had served 3 1/2 years in reform school for breaking into cars. While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.

Brown, who lived in Beech Island, S.C., near the Georgia line, won a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living in America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He had a brief but memorable role as a manic preacher in the 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers."